Be it swimsuit models or 18-year-old hockey players, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

With that in mind, Maple Leafs head scout Dave Morrison thinks he’s got a chance at landing a looker or two when the NHL entry draft gets under way here Friday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

With two picks in the first round — unless his boss, Brian Burke, gets trade fever in the hours leading up to the opening bell — Morrison feels he can get a player not so far down on the team’s draft depth chart.

“Right now I’m hopeful that at 25 we’ll get a guy on our list roughly between 13 and 14 or 18 and 19,” Morrison said on Thursday. “You never know what will happen. I’m just looking at it from my perspective at who is going to be taken and why.”

The Leafs remained busy on the eve of one of the most important days on the hockey calendar, fine-tuning their draft board and interviewing a handful of prospects, many of them for a second time. Several of those also went through another physical test with Leafs strength and conditioning coach, Anthony Belza.

Among the prospects stopping by at the team’s boardroom in a downtown hotel were forwards Matt Puempel and Ryan Strome.

The latter would likely take a trade up to acquire, but as a scouting staff, the team needs to be prepared for all possibilities.

“This draft this year is going to be difficult to predict,” Morrison said. “We are prepared for a lot of different things and a lot of different players. It’s a fairly large group and a fairly deep group.”

While there seems to be a consensus among the top four players, the rest of the first two rounds can vary wildly depending on the team’s own analysis. There may not be a superstar lurking beyond the top handful, but there’s also a consensus that there is an opportunity for teams to get players they covet.

“I took our list, I took Central Scouting’s list and I took some of the pundits lists and the variance with some kids is staggering,” said Leafs vice-president of player development, Dave Poulin.

“Because of the variance from six to 20 or six to 40 or six to 50 depending on the team, there are so many different flavours. We have to be prepared for whatever happens.”

As much as it can be obvious looking at the big roster what the Leafs needs are, Burke said the team doesn’t let that factor into its decision-making. Overall, the Leafs’ philosophy is to draft the best available player rather than by position of need.

“I think your job as general manager is to address positional concerns by trade,” Burke said. “At the draft, you take the best player available. That’s what we are going to do. That’s what we’ve always done.”

Given that anyone the Leafs select this weekend is a minimum of a year away from threatening for a roster spot and likely two years away, the key to drafting success is projecting what the future might hold.

“The most misleading part is who is the best player right now,” Poulin said. “It’s what do you see four or five years from now.”